Krause Springs Camping (hello to my trees)

For some reason, I wasn’t super excited about this trip.

Like, at all. I decided not to completely clear my schedule and bring my work laptop with because this felt simply like an obligation to be there a few days and keep our 4th of July camping spot. Also, I feel like I’ve had a LOT of time out of work lately – May’s two week vacation, June’s adventures with Covid, some other appointments and other nonsense on Fridays interrupting my one focused workday per week last month, and now here I am in July taking yet more time? I mean, it’s not like I feel guilty or anything – stuff happens – but I DO feel behind the 8 ball right now even though things are actually reasonable at work right now.

So, I headed to Krause Springs almost reluctantly, not expecting much. Instead, I had a very nice relaxing time and enjoyed myself immensely.

We crafted our camping schedule around what other people would NOT want to do. Since the holiday was on Monday, we figured most people would just take a long weekend. So, instead, we came in on Sunday, and planned to leave Thursday, hoping for two nice, relaxing mid-week days with barely anyone there. Though it defied my natural logic to squeeze in every moment of camping possible, I did not have us leave on Friday night or even Saturday, which gave us most of the weekend to get packed. When did we pack? Pretty much Sunday morning. 🙂

When we rolled in around 1pm, it was super crowded as expected. Setup hit a few snags – we left the camper keys on the counter, so we had to get creative about getting into some locked areas (luckily, we are both at least moderately trained rogues), and the pop up didn’t want to pop up correctly – but with some help from our very gregarious neighbor, we worked it out and quickly started our vacation with some hot dogs, pasta salad, and a cold one, appreciating our view.

The next two days were classic Krause Springs camping – a healthy sonic diet of classic rock and ambient electronica filled our space station while we devoured the current trashy LIT RPG series that we’re both reading (Noobtown) and mostly avoided the populace. Every so often, we’d take a walk to the pool, jump in to cool off, and walk back to enjoy our trees – either from under their shade or through the window of our air-conditioned escape.

We crafted a plethora of delicious cuisine de camp, including fancy steak dinner, greek chicken plates, and a really great BBQ bacon cheeseburger.

The fireworks show was as always, a lovely spectacle, and the reason why we choose to camp at this particular place and time every year.

I’m finding that I’m trending toward early to bed and early to rise on vacations lately, which is convenient when you’re camping in temperatures rivalling the center of the sun. I caught two sunrises (!!) which is a first for me here at Krausse (usually here I’m more of a “stay up late, sleep until mid-morning” kind of gal), and we found some more temperate time in the butterfly gardens and to hike the property before it was too hot or crowded.

I spent these hot hours on Tuesday working – first taking some meetings in the late morning and then going offline and working on a presentation during the afternoon. This was one of the reasons I felt behind – and while one wouldn’t normally consider work a relaxing vacation activity – digging into this without interruption for half a day was super relaxing to me and made me feel calmer.

Wednesday, I did my best not to work too much, maybe an hour or two of answering emails and chats, but I did spend some time researching how I wanted to level up my D&D character for our work campaign, so that somewhat (not really) counts. We decided it was the day to try the BBQ joint (Opie’s) we drive past every year on the way. The sweet and spicy ribs and the tater tot casserole were both decadent treats, and free butterbeans and bbq beans were a nice surprise, but everything else was just okay. I’d go back again if we didn’t feel like cooking one day, but I wouldn’t go out of the way to plan for it every year.

We spent the afternoon at the falls, relaxing in our tubes watching kids launch themselves off the rope swing. After we returned to the space station, we noticed we had no cell service, which was totally fine though I had need for it the next morning since I had a meeting I couldn’t miss.

We fell asleep rather early and woke for another sunrise, and also noticed the cell service was still not reliable. Instead of going back to sleep, we just packed up the camper and headed out around 9am, so I could take my meeting on the road, and before 11am, we were home, unpacked, and back to work!

It was a short and sweet trip, and while I certainly have enjoyed our longer sojourns here in years past, four nights was enough to defrag our brains a bit and find our quietude.